Scotland Golf Bible

A guide to green fee value for money

Category: Parkland (Page 1 of 26)

189. Belleisle. 25 Apr 2023.

July 30, 2026 /

Belleisle – the people’s course, heading back to the gentry?

Round £29.99 (GolfPass voucher, April 2023; list price now £60). Par 69 (yellow tees). Course Rating / Slope 70.2 / 119. Value 5/5 at £29.99; 4/5 at current GolfNow circa £43; 3.5/5 at list £60.

Moly’s Score — 89 gross (31 Stableford, handicap 14)

Belleisle’s story has a sweet beginning. The estate’s lands, originally Netherton of Alloway, passed through Ayrshire gentry before Hugh Hamilton bought the property around 1787 using Jamaican Plantation money, renaming it Belleisle. The Baronial sandstone mansion was rebuilt in the 1800s, then the Coats “industrial dynastic” family acquired it in 1886.

The beautifully manicured 12th fairway at Belleisle, showcases the condition.

Following the death of George Coats, Ayr Burgh Council purchased the entire estate for £25,000, opening James Braid’s two courses in 1927. Finally, the working man could finally walk the same ground his grandfather had doffed his cap to. There is a certain irony, then, in the fact that the listed green fee has doubled in two years since I played to now £60. One finds oneself wondering when the first £100 municipal round will arrive and whether Scotland will even notice what it has lost.

The opening tee at Belleisle; wide, well-maintained, and immediately signaling something above the municipal average.

Belleisle is the flagship of Golf South Ayrshire’s eight courses, which are covered in Blog 136. It is a proper Braid design, only two par fours under 400 yards from the yellow tees, fast-running fairways, and sound bunkering. The greens and surrounds are the real quality indicator, and on the day Fran and I played, late April sunshine, warmer to the eye than to the skin, they were excellent. It played like a good private members’ course in England. Which, at a municipal green fee, is precisely the point.

The approach to the 2nd, beautiful parkland character

The white tees add nearly 400 yards and lift the par from 69 to 71, with holes 1 and 15 both becoming par 5s. The 15th in particular, 426 yards from yellow, 478 from white, would actually be easier from the white.

The 15th, a long par four with a stone bridge, a burn, and an estate lodge for company.

Fran and I played steadily. I shot 89, undone by a 10 on the 18th, a 504-yard par 5 with a burn, a dogleg, and a steep gully that I negotiated with maximum creativity!

Fran playing into the 6th, with the par 3 7th and Arran beyond. Municipal golf at its finest.

A shortage of bunker rakes is noteworthy, a Golf South Ayrshire policy issue discussed in Blog 136, not a Belleisle-specific failing. The absence of twilight rates is more surprising for a late April afternoon, and is itself a small symptom of the broader commercial drift in municipal golf pricing.

Fran’s approach to the 18th, with the roofless shell of Belleisle House behind. Sold by the council in 2012, gutted by accidental fire in 2019, the council were mid-process repurchasing it when the blaze broke out.

The mansion tells its own story. Belleisle House, Category B listed, Scottish Baronial, presiding over the 18th fairway; it was sold off by South Ayrshire Council in 2012 for £300,000 and gutted by an accidental fire in 2019. The council now own the shell. The golf course thrives; the house that once commanded the estate does not.

For international visitors wanting to understand Scottish golf, Belleisle is essential. It showcases what civic investment in the game can produce at its best. At £29.99 it was exceptional. At £43 via GolfNow today it remains good value. At £60 list, the ancestors might start to feel the ground shifting beneath them again.

Course Type: Parkland
Par 69 yellow tees (2 par 5s, 13 par 4s, 4 par 3s) / Par 71 white tees
Distance: 6,036 yards (yellow tees)
Course Rating / Slope (yellow): 70.2 / 119
Moly’s Gross Score: 89

Moly’s Belleisle card, 89.

187. Greenburn. 26 Mar 2023.

June 16, 2026 /

The Golf Club and the Viaduct – which will last longest?

Green Fee: £15 (winter rate). Par 71. Course Rating/Slope: 71/128 (yellow tees). Value: 4/5.

Moly’s Gross Score: 89

Playing Greenburn, I found myself thinking not just about where the course sits geographically – deep in Scotland’s central belt between Glasgow and Edinburgh – but where it sits economically. Scotland has around 575 golf courses and almost certainly cannot sustain all of them. I pondered which side of that financial reckoning Greenburn would end up on. Let’s park that for now.

Hole 4 – a long Par 5, with the first start view of the viaduct

Greenburn Golf Club traces its roots to 1894, when the working people of Fauldhouse built a course near their village. The present course, voluntarily built by the members in 1953, relocated to the Breichwater Valley. The club motto, Per Nostra Opera (“By our own endeavors”), says what it does on the tin.

I played at a winter rate of £15, off temporary mats but normal greens. I met recent retiree and local member Gordon Cleland, a decent golfer and clearly very much at home.

Local Member Gordon Cleland, local member, playing his approach at the par 5 13th.

After a welcoming opening hole, Greenburn becomes a narrow course, surrounded by industrial landmarks, most notably the electrified Glasgow to Edinburgh railway line. Pylons and overhead wires run over some holes.

The sometimes very large and sloping greens were in good condition for the end of winter. I got the feel they would be fast and very difficult in Summer.

The first, with characteristic large green, the rope marking the winter ground boundary

As you play toward the 4th green, a massive stone railway viaduct dominates – dark and monumental, it represents the ambition of the Victorian age, as does the existence of clubs like Greenburn. Nobody designs viaducts anymore, they’d be too expensive, but were they built to disturbingly outlast their surroundings.

Hole 3, one of the birdieable par 4 holes, with wide narrow green

The highlight of the course are a quartet of difficult par threes, a truism brought to life by Gordon’s tale of the Greenburn “secret 2s pot”. Most clubs have a small stake side comp along side the weekly medal, the “pot” shared by players getting a 2 on their card. At Greenburn this side sweep is on only one of the par 3s, but secretly chosen. Given the difficulty of the par 3s, the pot can accumulate. On one occasion, Gordon took home £340 for a birdie two at the 10th, the stroke index 5, ‘Muldron’ .

The 6th, at 171 yards, is the shortest of a quartet of great par threes at Greenburn

One disappointment was almost every bunker was marked GUR. Well-shaped, properly positioned, but out of play. Hopefully seasonal rather than structural.

Moly playing his ‘normal’ draw off the winter tee at the 14th, a tough par 4.

Greenburn is a good course, around mid-table in my ranking of Scotland’s courses that I’ve played. It sits in a central belt that offers a car-owning golfer several credible alternatives within thirty minutes. Membership at £738 a year is deliberately affordable — the club keeping itself within reach of its community. The £30 summer visitor is excellent value.

Shades of East Renfrewshire come to mind looking back from the 10th Green

So to the viaduct or course question.

The viaduct was built in an era when Fauldhouse had the population, the industry, and the collective will to anchor infrastructure for generations. The golf club was founded in the same spirit, by the same kind of people, in the same era. Both have lasted. But the economic conditions that created them, dense local population, limited mobility, a working community that played its local course because there was no other, have long since dissolved.

OOB down both sides of the fine 18th hole at Greenburn, likely ruin many a card.

Scotland probably cannot sustain 575 golf courses indefinitely. The adjustment will be slow and uneven, shaped by club type, geography, land ownership and sheer stubbornness. Members’ clubs built by communities like this one don’t close easily – they endure through loyalty, deferred maintenance, and people like Gordon who simply keep turning up. But the structural pressure is real, and it falls unevenly. A course in the middle of the quality distribution, in the middle of the country, with several competitors nearby and no obvious distinguishing draw for the visitor market, faces a particular kind of exposure that a municipal course or a well-capitalised commercial operation simply does not.

The viaduct will almost certainly outlast us all. The golf club? I genuinely hope it does too. But the question in the title isn’t rhetorical.

More on Scotland’s golfing landscape — and what the economics might mean for courses like this one — in a future post.

I scored 89. The course reminded me a little of East Ren (Blog 169).

Facts:

Course Type: Parkland/Moorland
Par: 71 (3 par 5s, 11 par 4s, 4 par 3s)
Distance: 5,659 yards (yellow tees)
Course Rating/Slope: 71/128 (yellow tees)
Moly’s Gross Score: 89
Green Fee: £15 (winter rate)
Value: 4/5

Moly’s 89, was a decent game.

185. Broadlees. 25 Mar 2023.

June 12, 2026 /

If a farmer builds a golf course, this is what might be par.

Price: £16. Par 36. CR 69.0, Slope 119.

Value: 3.5 / 5.

Moly’s Score: 45

In 1987, the UK Government launched the Farm Diversification Grant Scheme, to incentivise farmers to diversify; by the early 1990s courses began sprouting at a rate that may have startled Old Tom Morris. My own club, Isle of Wedmore in Somerset, was built in 1992 on Lineage Farm by Ken Abraham, using a standard hymn sheet – rolling agricultural land, modest construction budget, an unfussy layout, and a prayer that golfers would cover the mortgage.

“Anderson’s Garage” the aptly named first hole, par 4, surrounded by Farmer’s fields

Robert and Barbara Anderson did the same in 2004, converting their South Lanarkshire farm into the Broadlees Golf operation; range, 9-hole course, crazy golf, footgolf, academy, cafe and in 2021 a second very unusual addition (covered in Blog 186). They self-confidently named the course’s address “Anderson” Drive, Chapelton, after themselves!

The workmanlike hole names also gives insight to the Andersons; ‘Anderson’s Garage’, ‘Gas Works’, ‘Worker’s Way’, ‘Out the Moss’, ‘Old Road’ and ‘Five Acre’. The ‘Powmillon’ burn (hole 4) runs through well-heeled Strathaven a few miles to the south-east, whose own Golf Club has more bourgeois hole names.

The Broadlees free laminated course guide, that much grander clubs could learn from.

The Andersons display good commercial instincts, no more so than with the ‘free’ laminated course guide (see above). For a pay-and-play operation of this scale it is more than you expect, and much better than many established member clubs that charge several times the greenfee.

A poignant fifth hole spot with tractor seats (?) repurposed for rest — an honest summary of Broadlees origins. The memorial bench commemorates John Anderson.

What you might get when a farmer builds a golf course on a limited budget is, I think, what you get here. The bones are reasonable at around 3000 yards, a par 36 with two par fives and two par threes. The par-five 4th (Powmillion, 479 yards) and the par-five 7th (Over the Burn, 456 yards) give the round depth. Water features on some holes, including a pond at the 2nd and a burn that winds its way around the 7th green, retained by a rustic timber revetted bank. Bunkering is sufficient, but was unraked when I played.

The limited framing developed is shown here at the 2nd hole, ‘Gas Works’, a short par 4.

The central challenge with designing a course on open farmland, such as Broadlees, is framing. Well framed holes visually present a picture using trees, contour, rough, bunkers, water and elevation. This skill is epitomised by the Camoufleur Alister MacKenzie, whose work can be seen at Pitreavie (Dunfermline) see blog 150. At Broadlees, fairways unceremoniously bleed into rough. The trees planted are still young; scrub and rough areas are unformed; the contours, while present, have not yet sharpened. I hope the Anderson family get to see Broadlees mature.

The 7th green (Over the Burn, par 5, 456 yards), its rustic timber-revetted bank is the course’s most marked piece of construction.

The greens are the strongest element. True, consistent and well-presented on a late-March morning when much of the course was still very wet. However, the claim that they rank among the finest putting surfaces in Lanarkshire is bold, and nowhere near the truth in my opinion.

The 6th, ‘Out the Moss’ (par 4, 290 yards). A typical hole on Broadlees

The two wind turbines deserve a mention as they are visible from most holes and dominate the final green. They present a reminder that Broadlees is a commercial enterprise built by farmers who needed multiple revenue streams from a single property. The turbines, golf course, cafe, Santa’s grotto. Each a response to the same challenge – making a small rural business pay in a Scottish golf landscape where established member clubs and council-owned courses provide stiff, and often quietly subsidised, competition.

The ninth, with Farm windturbines

At £16 for nine holes, Broadlees is cheap, and relatively good value. Within a few miles, South Lanarkshire golfers have many choices, so Broadlees needs to keep well below the competition fees, certainly until the course matures.

The Andersons, however, were not finished. In 2021, they added a second course — and this one was genuinely unlike anything else in Scotland. See Blog 186 to find out more.

Value: 3.5 / 5. The Andersons have built something from nothing and kept adding to it for twenty years. That deserves acknowledgement. But a golf course is not only measured by the effort that went into building it. The framing will come. It just wasn’t there yet. But at the price it’s good value.

Facts:

Course type: Parkland/Pasture

Par 36 (2 par 5s, 5 par 4s, 2 par 3s)

Distance: 2,954 yards (yellow tees)

Moly’s Gross Score: 45 (9 holes)

See also: Blog 186 — Broadlees Par 3 Golf Course

Moly’s card. Level 5s, I hit the ball pretty steady.

183. Mearns Castle. 24 Mar 23.

June 10, 2026 /

“Most scenic and challenging in the area.” An exaggerated claim by the Academy.

Round £10 (GolfNow Hot Deal, now £20). Par 31. Value 2/5.

Moly’s Score – 40

There is a real Mearns Castle about half a mile from the golf course, built in 1449 by Lord Herbert Maxwell. The same Maxwell family whose descendants would eventually own Southerness on the Solway Firth, reviewed in Blog 164, a course that justifies the word “scenic” more than anything I encountered here.

The actual nearby ‘Mearns Castle’, a 15th century Maxwell tower house, which the course takes its name. I wonder if Satnav ever gets this confused with the course.

The castle has, as far as I can establish, no connection whatsoever to the golf academy except proximity and, one suspects, the marketable romance of a medieval tower.

The golf academy is a substantial operation with Toptracer range, tuition, café, fitness studio, nail salon, and a massage therapist! More of a leisure complex with a 9-hole course attached. Nothing wrong with that, but problems begin when the website describes that course as “one of the most scenic and challenging courses in the area.”

I played it on 24 March 2023, via a GolfNow Hot Deal, for £10. It was waterlogged. It should have been closed.

How could you allow play with fairways like this in several places. Sometimes short term economics doesn’t make sense. One never knows if a Blogger will come along!

The course occupies pleasant enough parkland on the southern fringes of Newton Mearns, the well heeled commuter town south of Glasgow. The 1st offered an early introduction to the course’s style: there is a hidden fairway ditch ready to swallow a ball without warning. This was one of the very few “challenging” features though.

The course had minimal fairway bunkering. However the greens were surprisingly good surfaces, so well done to the greenkeepers. It is the one positive comment I can offer.

The greens were redeeming, a benefit for players learning the game. Here at the 4th.

The course website mentioned “continued investment in drainage and course improvements.” This is a tacit acknowledgement that drainage was a problem, which again raises the question why the course was open. A course that quietly admits its drainage issues while remaining open in March when waterlogged is providing very poor value, even at £10.

The was the typically bland approach view, here at the 5th hole, with the building ruins on the left being one of the very few interesting features.

The list price is now £20 for nine holes, I paid £10 on a Hot Deal. But golf on a course that should have been closed, is not good value at any price. The marketing overclaim tips it further – a course that sets expectations it cannot meet is doing its visitors a disservice.

Facts:

Course Type: Parkland

Par 31 (9 holes)

Moly’s Gross Score: 40 (net par)

Round: £10 (GolfNow Hot Deal). List price £20 (9 holes).

Value: 2/5

Moly shot 40 on a waterlogged day.

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